Go Aboard A Fleet Of Military Ghost Ships Decaying Off The Coast Of San Francisco

Since 1946, the US government has maintained fleets of various "mothballed" ships that can be readied and used in case of a crisis.

These boats, some of which are very old, include military ships that served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm, as well as civilian merchant ships from previous decades. The fleets sit, mostly untouched and off-limits, in the coastal waters of California, Texas, and Mississippi as well as North Carolina and New Jersey.

One of the fleets, located off the coast of San Francisco in Suisun Bay, once counted as many as 340 ships in its ranks. Today, 10 ships remain, rusting in the California sun and leaving toxic chemicals in the water. The US Maritime Administration has mandated their scrapping. By 2017 they will all be gone.

Boarding these ships is strictly prohibited to the general public — getting onto one at all is a tall task. But photographer Amy Heiden gained access to the decaying ships before some of them were scrapped, shooting on their decks and inside the vessels.

The ships pose an environmental threat because they have already dropped 20 tons of barium, copper, lead, and zinc into the bay.

The ships have been "mothballed" — maintained and not completely abandoned. In the event of a crisis, military or otherwise, they could be brought back into service.

Much of the fleet that Heiden photographed has already been scrapped. This attack cargo ship, the USS Tulare, was held inside a larger mining barge in the fleet until 2012, when it was sent to be dismantled.

The ships' interiors can feel like a time warp. The USS Tulare was commissioned in 1956, and much of its equipment reflected that era, before advanced naval technology.

But old and new tech mingle on the mothballed fleet. Also on the mining barge sat the famous Sea Shadow, a stealth ship built by Lockheed Martin in 1984. Kept secret until 1993, the Sea Shadow was an experiment in radar-evading naval technology. The ship was finally sold for scrap in 2012.